Trudeau announces $252 million in aid for agri-food sector in ‘initial’ direct support for industry

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dedicated $252 million in federal aid for the agri-food industry on Tuesday, in order to help struggling producers and sustain the country’s food system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With this funding, we’re giving extra help to beef and pork producers so that they can adapt to this crisis. This is an initial investment and if we need to add more we will,” Trudeau said at his daily press conference.

Just less than one-third of the support funding, $77.5 million, will be given to food processors. The millions can be spent by companies on personal protective equipment for workers, upgrading their facilities to better promote current public health recommendations or expanding their processing capacities, Trudeau said.

About half of the aid, $125 million, will be added to the AgriRecovery program, which Trudeau stressed is specifically to help Canadian beef and pork producers. AgriRecovery is a shared federal-provincial program designed to provide financial relief to agriculture businesses during emergencies. Typically, funding is made available in the case of weather-related disasters like flooding and drought.

Provinces have to trigger the program and share costs with the Government of Canada in a 60:40 federal-provincial split.

“Farms and processing plants are raising more animals than the system can process into things like steak and bacon, because of COVID-19. For many farmers, this crisis means that they have to keep animals for longer periods of time, and that can be expensive,” Trudeau said.

Canada’s largest meat-processing plant, a 2,000-worker Cargill facility south of Calgary, was the largest single-site outbreak of COVID-19 in Canada. According to CBC News’ reporting, 921 employees at the plant tested positive for the coronavirus. It was shut down for two weeks but, despite an attempted injunction by the workers’ union, it reopened on Monday. It will temporarily operate at a limited processing capacity, according to the company.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s (CFA) vice-president Keith Currie told the House of Commons’ industry committee on Monday night that pork producers around the country have been considering euthanasia to curb losses on livestock that they can’t process and are struggling to continue to afford feed for. The CFA speaks on behalf of 200,000 of Canada’s farmers.

Similarly, Bob Lowe, the president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA), which represents the 60,000 beef farms in the country, said there is a backlog of 100,000 cattle in Canada that are ready to be killed and processed, but that there is no where that can happen. The value of these cattle have plummeted by one-third from $250 million to $166 million, he told MPs at Monday night’s meeting.

John Barlow, the Conservative Party’s lead on agriculture issues, has repeatedly called for the government to reform its business risk management programs (such as AgriRecovery) during the pandemic.

The final portion of the federal government’s most recent financial pledge will establish the first-ever Surplus Food Purchase Program. The government will buy up to $50 million worth of food in existing inventories and redistribute it to local food organizations and alike groups.

“This will help ensure that our farmers are being compensated for their hard work and that our most vulnerable have access to fresh food during this crisis,” Trudeau said.

The quarter-of-a-billion-dollar announcement by the federal government represents less than one-tenth of what CFA had underlined as what is necessary to hold the industry over throughout the COVID-19 crisis, which Currie reminded MPs last night was $2.6 billion.